Show and Tell – What Crack?

01Sep

55th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy

The postings for this carnival can be found on the Creative Gene blog at http://creativegene.blogspot.com/. The subject for the 55th Carnival is “Show and Tell.” I was one of those kids who really didn’t like Show and Tell. I always had some great stuff and some great ideas but always stressed out that the other kids wouldn’t see how cool my stuff was. I needed a lot of affirmation in those days. Who am I kidding I still need a lot of affirmation (hint, hint). So at first I really didn’t intend to take advantage of this opportunity to show some of my cool stuff. I finally convinced myself, that I was a big boy now and I could handle it. So with that not too subtle disclaimer, here is my offering.

Item #1

We have a lot of old pictures from my dad’s family because one of his aunts owned a photo studio in Mangum, Oklahoma. Because my father was the oldest son of the oldest son of the family, he got a lot of attention. The picture I am sharing is a baby picture of Dad when he was less than four months old. We know that because he was born in August, 1911 and the picture is dated ’11. We know that it was taken at the Yoder Studio in Mangum, because his aunt, Minnie Yoder Cheek was the photographer. But to our sorrow at some point in it’s 80 year journey from the studio to us, the picture was bent leaving a large crack all the way across the front. You can tell from the header picture on the page, someone along the way did not take very good care of the family pictures. I have done a lot of photography, both behind the lens and in the dark room and I did not know of anyway to repair the damage that would not do more damage in the process. So the picture stay safely put away in order to preserve it from further damage. That was until I discovered Adobe Photoshop. I have worked with a number of graphic programs in the past 15 years but none that really let you do much with photographs.But now here was a sophisticated tool that approached giving you the same kind of control over image quality that you have in a good dark room as well as a number of very useful digital tools.

After discovering some of the features I decided to jump right in and see how it would do with a really difficult project.Just how well would I be able repair the damage to Dad’s picture digitally.After carefully scanning the picture in to several high resolution tiff files, I started to work.My first few attempts were not too successful, but I was gaining confidence and hopefully some skill with each new attempt.I was excited to see the old picture finally begin to look like new again.While it is not yet perfect, notice the irregularities around the frame, Item #2 is of sufficient quality that I was willing to share and made copies for most of the family.

Item #2

I’m not sure how Dad would feel about all of the world seeing him wearing a dress, but I know Aunt Minnie would be proud.